


Awakening

by afterandalasia



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Genre: Community: disney_kink, Dark Character, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-03
Updated: 2011-10-03
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merryweather can see things that her sisters cannot, and feels the magic more deeply. She cannot live forever on the bounded side of Good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> For the wonderful anon at the kinkmeme who gave this prompt:
> 
> "Merryweather always struck me as a little less pure good than the other good fairies. I'd love to see a fic where she goes to the dark side."

They never saw.

'Just do your best', they had murmured, and pushed her towards the child's cradle. They, who had given gifts of beauty and song, as if they did not know what power they had held. As if they did not know that on one fingertip they could hold a Kingdom, that with the blink of their eyes they could bring any city in the world to its knees.

She reaches into the still half-woven threads of Maleficent's spell and winds in a new story, the green-silk of her magic raw and taut in her mind. Maleficent's magic feels like velvet, like the finest fur, as warm as if it is still the pelt of an animal. In the past, Merryweather has woven her magic with that of her sisters, and at times their magic can feel like the softest wool, combed as fine as a whisper beneath the touch of her mind. But the wool is far from the lamb, and never lay as warm beneath her fingers as does this.

Flora speaks as if it will be nothing to go without magic for the years. Merryweather's fingers itch beneath her skin when she cooks or cleans or watches the others trying to do the same. Oh, Rose is beautiful, and Rose is sweet, and Rose is fair, but sometimes Merryweather turns to the north and sees the far-off mountains and gathered clouds, and cannot help but shiver.

Sometimes she despairs of the vacancy in their eyes; sometimes she envies it. Fauna can cradle the infant princess in her arms and sit enthralled, the hours passing without her worrying on anything more than songs and promises and toys. Flora can fuss over the house and dinner and the flowers in the garden, and forget that she is a fairy at all.

Merryweather cannot forget.

She cannot forget what it was to feel her wand in her hand, to feel the warmth of her magic flow up her arm and suffuse throughout her body. She cannot forget what it was even before that, before they had bound their magic to the wands, when it had flown hot and ripe through her body. The longer she goes without magic, the colder she begins to feel, and she wonders whether this is what it is like to be human.

Often at night she will sit up, in the dark, whilst the others sleep because that is what humans are expected to do. Aurora sleeps so soundly that sometimes it almost frightens her, but she can stroke the girl's hair gently in the moonlight, and she will not stir. Fairies do not need to sleep, not in the way that humans do, and Merryweather stays awake and watches the stars wheel across the sky, and counts their turns as they become years and promise to save the girl whom only she, she cannot help but think, has truly worked to save.

She is not surprised, in the end, when her spell is called upon. The others cannot begin to understand how strong Maleficent's magic was woven; they did not feel it, did not reach with their hands into hers to twine them together. Merryweather has made herself part of Maleficent's magic, and it feels like hot metal in her grasp and beneath her skin, like all the centuries ago when she was still young and fierce and full of the hot fae blood.

Flora casts the magic that protects the young Prince, another unfortunate human who has been dragged into the fights of the fae and sorcerors. How can she not see what strength she could have? She draws a shield from the air, enchants the sword that makes Maleficent fall, and--

And Merryweather feels the magic that has lingered in her for sixteen years ripped out of her body like stitches pulled from a wound, and though she smiles as Aurora is awakened, and is embraced by her Prince, and as they dance wound in each others' eyes, before too long at all she must turn away and close her eyes, and cradle the flame that has lit in her heart again.

The wand feels like it should be red-hot in her hands, burning like the touch of cold iron on faery skin. Merryweather remembers what it was to wind her magic into Maleficent's, and remembers the many nights that she lay awake and thought of her last magic cast, of the first truly powerful spell she had cast since her sisters had told her that she should cool the fire in her heart.

From somewhere in the depths of the night, she hears laughter that might just be Maleficent's. But louder is the blood rushing in her ears, the magic smouldering in her veins, and the new fire rushing in her soul.


End file.
